Many lawns are mowed using a powered mower of some sort. These powered mowers can be electric or internal combustion driven, but all have some form of ground-engaging wheels and tires to which a motor or an engine is drivingly connected.
As with any powered vehicle or machine, the driven wheels must establish traction with the ground in order to propel the vehicle. In the case of a lawnmower, slipping of the tires on the driven wheels can damage the lawn, create problems of mower control, or at least increase the time required to complete a mowing job. Slipping or spinning of the driven wheels can also create special problems on hills or on uneven terrain, especially on the uphill portion of such terrain.
Spinning of any driven wheel can often be traced to worn tread on the tire of that wheel, and spinning may increase tire wear worsening the situation.
Heretofore, the most common solution to the problems associated with worn treads on lawnmower tires has been to simply replace the entire wheel and tire. This solution may be costly, time consuming and unnecessary since the wheel, its hub, its rim and the other parts thereof may still be perfectly good, with only the tire tread being worn out.
While the art contains examples of means and methods for retreading automobile or truck tires, such means and methods are generally too complex, costly and difficult to be applied to a small and simple lawnmower wheel. Given the choice of using such complicated retreading methods or buying an entirely new lawnmower tire and wheel, most consumers will opt to simply purchase an entirely new lawnmower wheel and tire.
The above-discussed situations are applicable to nearly any small wheel, such as might be found on a tiller or other such home-use agricultural implement.
Accordingly, there is a need for a means for retreading small tires, especially lawnmower tires, which is easily used and which is inexpensive to purchase and does not require any special equipment or methodology.